On Oct. 8, a suicide bomber killed 17 people and wounded at least 63 in Kabul, outside the Indian embassy, by detonating a sport utility vehicle packed with explosives. Indian authorities believe the blast was directed against their compound. A Taliban spokesman has claimed responsibility for the incident and has confirmed that the group's target was New Delhi's mission.
The mission was also the target of a bombing in July 2008. Then, two senior Indian diplomats were killed along with 56 others in what has been described as the Afghan war's deadliest attack in Kabul.
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The Taliban--or, more precisely, Taliban-linked militants--also carried out the 2008 bombing, specifically a group led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose refuge is western Pakistan. The New York Times reports that he has had both "a long and complicated relationship" with the Central Intelligence Agency and "strained relations" with the Pakistani Taliban. Both Indian and American authorities believe Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, better known as ISI, had worked with the Taliban to pull off last year's terrorist attack in the Afghan capital. Islamabad denied it had anything to do with the bombing, but Washington has intercepts proving otherwise.
The ISI has been linked to a series of terrorist attacks against India, so why does Washington continue substantial support for Islamabad? The rationale, at its most basic level, is that we need to maintain ties with the Pakistanis to keep up influence and to help moderate elements control the government so that they can rid their nation of extremists. Support for this view came from CNN's Peter Bergen, who reported on Thursday that there has been a fundamental shift in popular opinion in the country.
The tipping point, as the well-known analyst noted, was the Taliban's decision earlier this year to move from the Swat Valley into the Buner District, only 60 miles from the Pakistani capital. By doing so, it caused the public to view the militants as real threats. And as a result of this new appreciation of risk, the Pakistani army's sweep to regain the areas was perceived as being in the national interest, not merely as a move to placate Washington, as earlier operations had been. "In fact, arguably not since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 have American strategic interests and Pakistani strategic interests been so closely aligned," writes Bergen.
If he is right--and from all indications he is--this would seem to be a particularly inappropriate time for Washington to change its policies toward Pakistan. Yet in the past those policies have retarded needed change by helping the wrong elements in the Pakistani government. Today, American policies remain, to say the least, tactically counterproductive and morally questionable.
For one thing, Washington provides billions in assistance to the Pakistani military in the hopes that it will fight extremists. The generals there make half-hearted efforts to do so every so often--to great fanfare--but their forays into tribal areas seem to have little lasting effect. Why? For one thing, the Pakistani army finds the presence of the militants in their country useful to keep aid dollars flowing from Washington.
And where have those aid dollars gone? It appears that only a small portion of Washington's cash has ended up helping soldiers fighting insurgents. Two U.S. Army generals, who talked to the Associated Press anonymously, maintained that all but $500 million of $6.6 billion in military assistance from 2002 to 2008 was actually diverted to civilian uses and to fighting India. Mahmud Durrani, a former Pakistani general and a past ambassador to Washington during the era of strongman Pervez Musharraf, backs up the charge. "The army itself got very little," he said. "The military was financing the war on terror out of its own budget."
Some even believe Islamabad has used a portion of American aid to fund its nuclear weapons program. Although there is no proof of that, it is clear the government has been rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal recently. And in a larger sense, the charge must be true because all material aid is fungible. We fear Pakistan's nukes in large measure because we think they may fall into the hands of terrorists, who appear to command the loyalties of critical personnel in the country's military and intelligence services. So we are, in the final analysis, helping the Pakistanis build the instruments of destruction we find so threatening. Over the course of decades, we have made compromise after compromise to fix the problem of the moment in Pakistan and, over the long run, have helped create a truly horrible situation.
Recent efforts to prevent the diversion of American assistance have caused friction in the Pakistani capital. A few of Washington's conditions on aid may be unnecessarily onerous, but the Pakistani army is complaining about safeguards intended to make sure the aid is used for intended purposes. For instance, the generals are enraged that Washington wants to make sure they fight insurgents in Quetta, a Taliban base, and anti-Indian terrorists in Muridke.
And, in any event, it's time we stop funding terrorism against India. The United States, through its assistance programs, effectively enabled Pakistan's ISI to mastermind the Indian embassy bombing last July, and it's almost certain our money was used for the attack this week. At some point, we have to accept responsibility for the consequences of our decisions.
We can fight terrorism or we can support the Pakistani military. History says we cannot do both.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China. He writes a weekly column for Forbes.
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